


They stole his life

by Perelynn



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Love/Hate, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 21:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18351869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perelynn/pseuds/Perelynn
Summary: Kristin Ortega is in the resleeving facility, waiting to meet the person they put into Ryker's body.Note: This is a translation of a wonderful piece by a Russian author, Helga Okami, @Helga_Okami on Twitter.





	They stole his life

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Он украл его жизнь](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/469436) by Helga Okami. 



Ortega is sitting on the bench, crouching uncomfortably, hiding behind the weathered pillar in the middle of a large waiting hall. People are crowding around her, relatives waiting for their close ones to show up in new bodies. The newly resleeved are wandering around the hall, waddling and stumbling like zombies from the old movies. 

Ortega cannot stop herself from shivering. Apprehension and anticipation take turns in waving through her body. It’s good she is hard to notice in all this commotion. She has time to muster her face into the mask she needs. She is just picking someone up. Nothing more. 

Each and every one of the people around her will have to re-acquaint themselves with their close ones, to find the familiar soul in a stranger’s body.  
She got the _reverse_ process. 

Unlike others, he is not staggering. He is not wearing shabby scrubs, either. When a Meth makes himself a present, the gift should be properly _wrapped_. 

She stands up, her fists clenched so tightly her nails dig into her palms. Happiness rises inside her, the irrational joy coming straight from her subconscious. There, deep inside, her emotional core is bubbling with delight. It doesn’t believe in resleeving. It sees Elias. 

Ortega feels something sting her eyes. She has to fight back - frustration first, and then the downright pain when this familiar face turns towards her without even a trace of recognition.

He seems a bit lost. Slightly disoriented. Still pale after getting out the tank. 

_A stranger._

He greets her with a cold, calculating stare. He is almost hostile, his chin up. 

_They don’t know each other._

Ortega arranges her features into a big fake smile and extends her hand for a handshake. She hopes her eyes are not glistening too much. She hopes the newcomer has not adapted enough to notice such subtleties.

He doesn’t shake her hand. One more proof of her failure. Now, she cannot even _touch_. 

They are met at the entrance by the crowd of Neo-C’s bellowing threats and slogans. Yearning rolls through her like these roars when she hears the stranger speak. His voice. It’s been ages since she last heard it.

This husky, purring voice that used to whisper her name in the night is not his anymore. Same with his eyes. Same with what, for the past centuries, has been called ‘a sleeve’.

For the first time in her life Kristin think that maybe her mother and these insane fanatics got something right. Maybe this crazy world is indeed truly and thoroughly fucked. 

***

The aircar she has stolen - or ‘commandeered’ for those who prefer legalese - from Bancrofts and their worthless son is gaining height. Ortega is trying to wheedle some details out of her passenger. At least one thing is clear. The secretive stranger who has no moral right to wear this sleeve is not from this planet.

Aloof. Detached. Sarcastic, despite the recent decanting.

She is telling herself that she is just playing a good cop.  
_‘Call it what you like,’ her subconscious screams, ‘just keep him talking.’_  
Ortega begins to see how this kind of ‘talking’ could make a decent virtual torture - or even a real-life one - if handled by some perverse mafioso.  
_Or Meth, in this case._  
Same shit, different pile.

Still, her babbling works. The stranger keeps talking, incidentally equalling her forced jovialness to the interstellar dictatorship and genocide. 

‘Right now I’m feeling pretty hostile towards Lawrence Bancroft whoever the fuck he is,’ the newcomer announced haughtily.

Such words are not met with cheers in Bay City. Especially if Bancroft is a person who just bought you, skin and all.  
_In this case, it’s not even your skin._

‘How can you not know about Bancroft?’ Ortega says carefully. ‘He’s one of the first founding Meths.’  
It can be a test. The stranger in Ryker’s sleeve is working for Bancroft, after all. 

But to the stranger, the word ‘Meth’ means nothing. Ortega is still citing the ancient myth about Methuselah when she gives the steering wheel a sharp pull. The aircar revs and dives upwards.

Right now she totally shares the stranger’s view on the fucking Meth and his perverted sense of humour.

Aircar cuts through the clouds, jumping out of the wet pulsing darkness into the sea of light, and the newcomer loses his bearings for a couple of seconds. He leans forward, almost to the control panel, and stares at the shining, silvery Aerium.

Ortega doesn’t give a crap about the Meths’ tower. Paired with this beauty comes humiliation, and she’d had enough of that during the investigation. But the stranger’s face - so close - betrays a sincere, childish awe. For a moment, his self-control is forgotten. 

She saw the same astonishment on Ryker’s face, the day she first brought him down on the tatami during in a sparring session. Did he let her win that day? Anyway, she won. He looked like a surprised boy back then - just like now.

The stranger returns to his seat, detached as ever. Kristin’s hands start shaking. She finally realizes how much she missed him. She barely manages to retain her own self-control.

She was never the best driver in the precinct, especially when it came to the unfamiliar models. Kristin is angry, this time at herself. Why didn’t she think of finding the autodrive setting in this fucking car? It’s too late now. She keeps talking to calm her nerves.

The swanky car is not exactly landing - it drops on the platform in a half-emergency mode, making a mess out of the perfectly manicured lawn. Kristin can hear the stranger comment on her driving skills, and not in a kind way.

She finally manages to get a name out of him. She now knows who exactly is inhabiting Ryker’s sleeve. The information doesn’t make the situation any easier.

Anger and pain are bubbling inside her, demanding to be let out. Choking on her own helplessness, Kristin is dying to take it out on someone, anyone, consequences be damned. Let them charge her for that fucking lawn and that the damaged limo. Let them choke on her last pennies. They probably know what she is spending all her money on.

Samir arrives just in time to stop her. As usual. As always. Before she goes too far. Abboud has a knack for it. Back in the day, he could stop them fighting - her, Ryker and Tanaka - with just a glance and a few calm words.

Before leaving, Ortega manages to sneakily put a pack of Elias’s favorite cigarettes into the stranger’s pocket. Ryker would never be able to quit smoking. 

The Meth’s ‘pet terrorist’ watches her leave, his face unreadable. 

***

‘Are you high?’ Kristin asks.

The stranger gives her a stare that fully qualifies him as bonkers. She has found him in the most dangerous part of the city. 

Ryker got into drugs when things spiraled downwards and the stress of it broke him.  
This idiot got out of the tank just this morning, and he is already high.  
_‘It has not even been half a day, you motherfucker,’_ Ortega thinks irritably. _‘Don’t you dare damage this sleeve in any other way, you moron.’_

 _‘Wouldn’t you want them to have something in common?’_ her inner voice asks her mockingly.

‘Yeah,’ says the newcomer with a smug look on his face, echoing her thoughts and looking even crazier for it.

Damned clown. 

When Ryker was high he looked pathetic. Frightened. Not at all like himself.  
Kovacs, drenched and dirty, with this ridiculous pink backpack of his, is sitting in the middle of a filthy alley like he owns the place, more arrogant and sarcastic than in the morning. 

Judging by the size of his pupils, he and Ryker are even using the same shit. 

_‘Holy Mary,’_ Ortega sighs, pretending to walk away. _‘What did I do to deserve all this crap?’_

To her surprise, it’s now the stranger who tries to connect. This time he extends his hand, mirroring her morning greeting. What a farce. Is this his idea of having fun? It most probably is, judging by his behaviour in the bar.

The fucking Meth is apparently hellbent on making her life fucking hell for ‘not doing a good job’ during the investigation.  
This is just too much. As if some powerful creature is dripping acid into the ant pile just to watch poor insects writhe in pain at their feet. 

Kristin provokes Kovacs and watches his reaction.  
His reaction hurts her and infuriates her much more than she expected.  
Fucking Takeshi Kovacs.  
He drives her nuts.  
Ryker used to drive her nuts, too - back then, when he had transferred from the Sleeve Theft Department into Organic Damages where she worked.  
Sleeve Theft Department. What an irony. What a cruel twist of fate. No, wait. It’s not fate. Fate is dead, as is death itself. This is a merciless joke of someone who believes himself to be a god.  
The face and the sleeve of a cop from the Sleeve Theft Department now belong to some elite terrorist from the past.  
The Meth. And fucking Kovacs.  
_They stole his life._

Ryker was always stubborn, like herself. Ryker’s life revolved around his work, same for her. But Ryker has never been such a smug and arrogant asshole.  
_He has also never been that shrewd._  
Especially when high. 

She is arguing with Kovacs with far too much passion for ‘just a cop who recently had this case’. The Meth’s pet terrorist notices that and turns her emotions against her, all with that smug grin of his.

‘Are you saying you didn’t deserve it?’

She knows he cannot mean that episode, but she still feels a pang of poisonous guilt.  
_‘You know it’s justified. You didn’t believe him.’_

Kovacs teases her and pressures her, pressing - by choice or by chance - into her sore spots. She feels like a cornered cat, hissing at the assaulter who pokes her with a stick and mocks her pain. 

He does not know. He has no clue. But it still feels like he sees right through her. The turmoil behind her fake smile. The way she looks at him. Her _special_ interest.  
Suddenly, his manner changes from icy detachment to sweeping intimacy.  
Maybe it’s the drugs.  
Maybe it’s a manipulation.  
There are naked bodies all around them, the AI colored light and the club music are throbbing to compliment the dancers’ erratic movements, but at the bar stand one can almost see the sparks flying between the two of them. 

The strangers watches the naked synths with Ryker’s eyes, then turns away and asks her out for a _date_. He means for a _fuck_ , of course. As if she is one of these whores.  
She wants to smack his face. The only thing that stops her is that it’s Elias’s face.  
Then Kovacs surprises her.  
He dared to turn the god down.  
He decided to go back on ice.  
He is most definitely the most crazy psycho she’d ever known.  
She feels hope rising in her chest. The hope for her and Ryker.  
Again.

***

In less than an hour the stranger together with an AI hotel make a short work out of four killers who had the misfortune to attack them, ruining the hotel foyer to boot.  
He is not just a psycho. He is a _really dangerous_ psycho.  
The body of the man she loves is inhabited by a crazy mercenary hunted by other mercenaries just as unhinged as himself.

This is where Ortega loses it. This fucking day has been killing her since the morning. She wants to cuff Ryker’s sleeve, drag him to the precinct and lock him up. Who says she is not justified to do so? Let the naysayers look at the pools of blood and the four bodies beaten into pulp on the hardwood floor. 

But, formally and technically, it’s _self-defense_.  
Her mask of a ‘community worker’ comes apart at the seams. Her fear is exposed.  
She wants explanations.  
She wants this fucking shit to finally stop.  
She wants to follow the stranger around to make sure Elias’s body is not destroyed when this motherfucker gets himself into something equally horrible in the next half hour.  
She wants to be _close_ , even in such an abnormal way.  
But she doesn’t have this right anymore.

Samir grabs her by the elbow, propelling her steadily towards the door.  
Kovacs, bruised and battered, covered in blood and gore, but somehow still sarcastic, disappears behind the doors of a retro-looking elevator.  
She wants to scream in fury. Instead, she lets out a short curse in Spanish.

The elevator doors have closed. She cannot see the stranger anymore, she cannot watch the changes in his expression.  
His cocky exterior slips away, giving way to pain, loneliness and despair.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I changed my mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18354314) by [Perelynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perelynn/pseuds/Perelynn)




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